Estimating for Everybody 2

Estimation must be based on facts, data, but often enough the data is hard to find. In that case we must ask questions.

What is the population of Bonavista? In Estimating for Everybody I used the value 3,800, a number given to me by the Mayor in February 2019. So yesterday I returned to the town council offices and asked the clerk on duty.

The first response was “It used to be 5,000!” Spoken with pride as if, would I but wait a week or two", that was where we were headed.

The end figure nominated was 3,100, which suggests that the population has reduced by 700 in six years, roughly a hundred each year, or two people every week.

Since I was interested in apples, and hence house lots, I asked how many houses there were in Bonavista. 2,900. Now I had asked the wrong question, because if there are 3,100 people here and 2,900 houses, that about to one person per household!

Perhaps some of the houses are empty, some are bed-and-breakfast? But then half of those houses would have to be empty to raise the average family to two people.

I figured that the clerk’s figures were either guesswork, or from different bases of data.

For example, on the ferry in February 2019 people asked me where I was going. “Bonavista!” I said brightly. “Oh, which part of Bonavista?”. It turned out that the ferry crew “Bonavista” meant “The Bonavista Peninsula”, not the town of Bonavista.

And some people will include the settlement of Spillars Cover as part of Bonavista.

Spillars Cove is two to three kilometres east of Bonavista; Elliston is about five kilometres south-east of Bonavista. I feel that many people speak of Bonavista as “all the people who come in to the post office for their mail”

People have different values in their heads. The population of Bonavista is anywhere from 5,000 down to 3,100 for just one person. Quantities may vary according to their mood.

People have different interpretations of the question. House buildings? Houses? Occupied houses? Houses occupied for part of each year?

I live in Bonavista and to my mind Bonavista means the town of Bonavista, which is separate from the settlement at Spillars Cove, and from Elliston. Charming as those places may be. And speaking of which what about Maberly? It’s just down the road …

Note too that most of the time we can never be dead-accurate about a figure, even a discrete value.

If we sent people out to knock on doors today, one couple might respond “two in this household”. Add two to our total. But maybe that couple are about to do a moonlight-flit tonight because, well, they are five months behind in their rent and …

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